Etsu Inagaki Sugimoto

Etsuko Sugimoto, also known as Etsu Inagaki Sugimoto, was a Japanese-American autobiographer and novelist.

She was born in Nagaoka in the province of Echigo (meaning “Beyond the Mountains”) in Japan, now part of Niigata Prefecture. Her father had once been a high-ranking samurai in Nagaoka, but with the collapse of the feudal system shortly before her birth, her family’s financial situation deteriorated.

Although she had originally been destined to become a priestess, she became engaged through an arranged marriage to a Japanese merchant living in Cincinnati, Ohio. Etsu attended a Methodist school in Tokyo in preparation for life in the United States and became a Christian.

In 1898, she went to the United States, where she married her fiancé and became the mother of two daughters. After her husband’s death, she returned to Japan, but later went back to the United States so that her daughters could complete their education.

She later lived in New York, where she took up literary work and taught Japanese language, culture, and history at Columbia University. She also wrote for newspapers and magazines.

She died in 1950.